I am unaware of any prior art which is relevant to my method of developing an electrically conductive pattern on a ceramic substrate which is to be disclosed herein.
However, Ford Motor Company, the assignee of this application, did in a companion case conduct a novelty study on a similar subject matter in the U.S. Patent Office. The novelty study reported several patents, all of which appear to me to be irrelevant with respect to the subject matter disclosed and claimed in this application. A brief review of these patents will be set forth below.
A number of patents cited in the novelty study are patents which deal with the coating of a metal wire with a protective layer. The protective layer may be a glass layer, and in some applications, there are a number of layers of protective material laid one over the other. The patents in this group include the following: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,106,490; 3,109,053; 3,294,731; 3,325,590; 3,352,009 and 3,451,847. None of these patents are directed to a method of developing an electrically conductive pattern on a ceramic substrate, as is disclosed and specifically claimed in this application.
The other two patents cited in the novelty study were U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,721,594 and 3,928,748. Both of these patents deal with window structures which have electrically conductive patterns thereon. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,721,594, a method is disclosed for electroless plating of a grid pattern on a window. However, prior to the electroless plating, the glass window has a finely divided ceramic frit placed thereon and the frit and window are passed through a glass tempering operation. U.S. Pat. No. 3,928,748 shows a heater grid structure for a window which is also made in a manner in which it can also serve as a radio antenna. Neither of these patents disclose or suggest the method which I am going to disclose in this specification.